


it's not going there (with the way we’re looking at each other)

by throwaway18



Series: she keeps me warm [8]
Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, Mutual Pining, Strangers to Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throwaway18/pseuds/throwaway18
Summary: you touch me and it's almost like we knew,that there will be history between us two.
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Son Seungwan | Wendy
Series: she keeps me warm [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790314
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	it's not going there (with the way we’re looking at each other)

_You touch me and it's almost like we knew_

_that there will be history between us two._

Two pairs of eyes meet.

Right after their hands do.

Irene retracts hers the moment her skin feels the touch of the stranger who’s in the middle of grabbing the last bottle of beer about the same time as she did. She hasn’t seen her before, not that she could name every single person at Jisoo’s party, but she isn’t nowhere near familiar, hasn’t recognized her around campus.

Slightly short. Brown hair. Expressive eyes. Pretty. She must be from another university.

“O—oh, uh, you can take it.” The girl stammers. It’s sort of cute, Irene thinks.

“No, please.” Irene places the bottle in the girl’s hands. No skin-contact this time. She can’t tell why that’s supposed to matter, brain fuzzy and jumbled like a tangled roll of yarn. Something throbs at the back of her eyelids. Is she intoxicated already? Her alcohol tolerance is a pity. Why was she even going for another the bottle in the first place? “I’ve had like, three, so you go ahead.”

“Thanks.” The girl takes it with a shy but gleaming smile. A little chuckle to punctuate her gratitude.

It worsens the knots of yarn in Irene’s head. The liquor really is taking a toll on her subconscious.

There’s an odd form of relief with the girl walking away from the kitchen, unopened bottle in her grasp. Irene chalks it up to her tendency of wanting peace for herself, peace from the EDM music, peace from the _hey, Irene, what’s up? Irene, over here!_ And more, _Irene, Irene, Irene,_ everything becoming _too much_ despite her willingness to be here.

To have a good time, she had rationalized.

But her head is being a buzzkill.

Then the girl halts midway in the threshold, back turned and face obscured, standing so still as if contemplating her decision whether it’s worth it to swim in the sea of inebriated young adults, or to take shelter somewhere else. After a few beats, she returns to where she had been in the kitchen like it’s where she’s meant to be. Decisive. Unlike Irene. Tension lays its weight on her shoulders, and she watches the girl expectantly from her place on the barstool by the kitchen island.

“Sorry.” The girl rubs at the back of her neck. “I just really don’t know anyone else here and my friend is, well…” She glances to the corridor leading to the living room where there’s a throng of people dancing, laughing and drinking, and it’s basically a mess of sticky bodies so Irene understands the apprehension. “She’s somewhere all handsy with someone. I’m Wendy, by the way.”

“I’m Irene.” Irene motions for her to sit on the other empty barstool. It’s an impossible task for her to verbalize why she’s inviting her to stay with her if her prior intention had been to bask in the peacefulness of being alone. She can be indecisive like that. “So what brings you here?”

“A friend dragged me. Said it’s a rite of passage for me to get this college experience.” Wendy rolls her eyes good naturedly, settling the bottle on the counter. She hasn’t opened it. Perhaps coming in to the kitchen had been her getaway from the strangers crowding the room.

Now, Irene has always been picky, probably where her indecisiveness has stemmed from, and she has always been skittish around new people, never readily engaging in small-talk on the get-go. So this version of Irene surprises her, becoming at ease with a person she has only known for three to five minutes. The knots in her head are still there, but it’s paradoxically pleasant, and the rest of her body just embraces the numbing sensation in her skull like it’s normal.

Irene knows it isn’t. She blames the alcohol again. Is she really _this_ intoxicated? Why isn’t she slurring? In a flash, the room temperature rises out of the blue, then it’s warm, awfully warm that her cheeks heat up for no apparent reason.

She attempts to keep herself calm, to keep herself collected, providing a polite smile aimed at Wendy. “You and me both,” she says. “The not knowing anyone else part, I mean. Some know me by extension, but I only really know a total of three people. Including the host and you.”

“Who’s the third one?” Wendy leans in halfway, gauging for her answer and capturing Irene’s undivided attention. It’s not even intimate, there’s still a respectable distance between them as acquaintances do, but it’s just the two of them in the kitchen, and Wendy’s presence prickles Irene’s flesh like an overwhelming scent of perfume. Irene tries to answer the question as coolly as she can.

“My boyfriend.”

“Oh.” The tension on Irene’s shoulders fizzle into smoke as Wendy nods, removes herself from their midpoint, widening their gap once more.

“I see,” Wendy says.

_You touch me and it’s almost like we knew,_

_That there will be history._

_I wish I could make time stop,_

_So we could forget everything and everyone._

A lot of things in life stumble into your way without any warning. Irene was a mystery package that had been mistakenly laid on Wendy’s front lawn and dug a home in her heart. To say their friendship was an unpredictable plot twist in their lives is an understatement. Their circles did not intersect. Their personalities were the polar opposite of the other. Even so, two different worlds collided almost seamlessly, a cosmic event far greater than the Big Bang. It shaped a bond so undeniably strong that an inevitable closeness blossomed in their months together.

Study sessions at coffee shops have become their weekly routine, going over their lectures and papers due in the company of the other. While the patrons surrounding them are loud and clear as day, they all turn into white noise blurring at the sidelines. Wendy feels like they have trapped themselves into an indestructible bubble, a whole separate world of their own that no one else could penetrate.

Not even Irene’s boyfriend.

Suho is an amazing guy. He really is. He, like Wendy herself, has a passion for theater, so they bond over their mutual interest and get along fairly well. Sometimes, he accompanies the two girls as they hang out, but whenever she and Irene are left by themselves, Wendy couldn’t explain the nasty flavor that bubbles in her mouth. If she were to be honest with herself, the bitterness feels closely like it’s guilt. But she’s not honest, leaving Irene earlier than intended instead to appease her consciousness.

It’s easier that way.

And one day, Irene decides to drop a massive bomb on her.

“I broke up with Suho.”

“What?” Wendy nearly chokes on her rice cake. It’s sudden, completely sudden. She swallows the lump down in a hard gulp, taking a faltering glimpse at the few inches of space between her and Irene. A permanent guest in their friendship. It’s always been there, not too distant but not too near either, like it’s some unspoken agreement they have.

Always to be followed.

Never to be filled.

When she regains the mobility on her lips to speak, she fully faces Irene. “Why?”

It’s a loaded question.

Because again, if she were to be honest with herself, there’s a particular response Wendy yearns to hear, a string of words nagging at the farthest depths in her brain. A particular answer she’s afraid to entertain. But again, she’s not honest, shoving the suffocating emotions into the cabinet of files she would rather remain untouched.

Irene takes a deep breath. She doesn’t meet Wendy’s questioning gaze.

“I got a scholarship in Paris.”

She has this faraway look in her eyes, staring blankly at the horizon from her seat on the bleachers. The field isn’t as quiet as they hoped it would be. Joggers are sprinting around the oval track, while soccer players are practicing their drills on the grassy lawn at the center. It’s just like their setup at the coffee shop where everything else blurs, except that Wendy’s thoughts blurs too, only processing the word, _Paris_.

“That’s great!” Wendy says, somehow forcedly after a stretch of silence, unsure if Irene has caught the obvious crack in her voice. If she has, then she has a good way of hiding it. Irene has an impeccable poker face anyway.

“Just not the break-up thing.” Wendy laughs nervously, though her mind is telling her that this is the most inappropriate time to laugh. Irene doesn’t seem affected by her reaction, but she turns and studies how Wendy’s expression become all over her face, those intense eyes burning holes through her shirt.

It stings.

And Wendy continues to react as awkwardly and as nervously as possible. She runs her sweating palms on the length of her jeans to distract herself. “But, wow, that’s real cool. A scholarship. All the way there. In Paris…” she trails off, with Irene nodding, moving farther than her original position.

Once more, there’s added space between them.

Neither of them says anything else.

The day goes by, and they lose touch for a while.

_'Cause when I got somebody, you don't  
And when you got somebody, I don't_

Irene visits two months later.

Wendy misses her arrival.

Not when she’s busy celebrating her monthsary in the arms of her new beau, high from the freshness of a new relationship, hand-in-hand and unaware at the most romantic spot in Seoul. She hears from Joy, one of Irene’s junior, about the older girl being back in town. It completely blindsides her, her feet failing her on her exit from the restaurant as she reads the text message. Jackson luckily saves her from tripping forward.

_“She was going to surprise you, but looks like she’s more surprised about you and Jackson.”_

The bitterness in Wendy’s mouth resurfaces, it’s almost nauseating, but she chucks it out of her mind, sealing it with a kiss on her boyfriend’s lips. If she were to be honest with herself, she would admit that the kiss isn’t working, but again, she’s not, so she pretends that it is and kisses him thrice.

She still contacts Irene to tell her she can drive her to anywhere she wants to go to on the next day, and to see her off on her departure.

Irene says there’s no need.

Says she’s already boarding.

She has cut her trip short.

As the plane takes off, Irene leaves Seoul without so much as a goodbye, clutching the key necklace she had planned on presenting to Wendy to match her own lock pendant that nestled mockingly below her collarbone.

_I wish that time would line up,_

_So we could just give in._

_We just dance backwards into each other,_

_Trying to keep our feelings secretly covered._

Irene reconnects with Suho.

He has gotten himself an internship in Paris, and they both rekindle their old flame. Things sail smoothly for them like they haven’t been apart for the past two years, instantly picking up where they left off. They have effortlessly fallen back into their old patterns, and there’s really no pressure for Irene to try too hard. Yet, she embraces him more than she used to, kisses him harder than she used to until the knots in her head loosen up.

And in those two years, it doesn’t surprise Irene how she and Wendy have drifted apart.

They have already lost touch for two months.

What’s two years for them?

It happens.

What they occasionally do have are hours of long video calls every couple of months, conversations ranging from anything to nothing at all. Wendy tells her stories about Jackson which makes Irene’s stomach churn uncomfortably, but she soldiers on with the tales of their dinner dates, fights and all the things in between. The discomfort doesn’t simmer. It churns and churns and churns, then Irene becomes accustomed to it, forgetting its mere existence, only materializing once again when she’s accompanied by nothing but her frightening thoughts.

Most of the time, Wendy would wind up falling asleep, her iPad’s camera continuing to record her sleeping face. Never in her lifetime has Irene felt so _painfully_ near but so _incredibly_ far from someone. The knots have moved their residency to her chest, constricting its threads around her heart. They stay tied there like they have nowhere else to go. She can’t bring herself to end the call, wanting for time to cease to exist, even with having Wendy unresponsive.

Just there, lying next to her equally sleepy cat as Irene gapes at her in her bed, tracing the outline of the younger girl’s solemn features on the screen of the laptop, wishing the for the device to acquire the magical ability to transport her to the one place she wishes she could be the most. And before the sun rises in Seoul, Irene would then end the call and head to school with barely a wink of sleep but would be energized more than ever.

She temporarily erases the call from her memory as soon as Suho sees her after class.

_You touched me and it’s almost like we knew,_

_That there would be history._

_There’s no way it’s not going there,_

_With the way we’re looking at each other_

Months pass and Irene receives news from their single common friend, Seulgi that they will be travelling to Europe.

They will be in Paris for a day.

A friend of Suho’s throws a party in his loft and extends an invitation to their visiting friends, and long story short, everyone has crowded in the main living space causing Irene to desperately seek for fresh air. She walks over to the balcony, slides the glass doors behind her and leans her arms on the bars of the railings.

“Getting too loud for you, huh?”

She twists her body and finds Wendy sprawled languidly on the chair at the corner, cheeks flushed and eyes lidded from the round of shots she had taken half an hour before. Irene nods with an exhausted smile. Wendy rises up from her seat, trying to balance herself by holding onto the railings but her knees fail her, and Irene rushes to her in time. Her long arm is draped over Irene’s shoulders and she whispers an airy, “Thank you.”

Breath hot and mouth intimately close, _dangerously_ close to Irene’s reddening ear.

Irene is taken aback by their proximity, heartbeat speeding its tempo.

This is the closest they have ever been.

Irene doesn’t let her panic show, cautiously placing Wendy’s arms on the railings just so she would have something else to do rather than think about her crimson face. But even though Wendy’sx arms aren’t around Irene’s body anymore, she’s leaning onto her like a lifeline, and Irene strikes up a conversation to derail her thoughts from the thunderbolts sparking at the exact location where Wendy’s arm touches hers. “So how are you and Jackson?”

Wendy tilts her head at Irene.

She’s close.

So _close._

“I’ve been single for three months.”

The Parisian wind blows past them, the cool breeze puckering goosebumps on Irene’s exposed skin. Irene shivers at the contact, but she mostly shivers at how Wendy’s fingers have crawled their way to brush against hers, starting with her thumb, then to her pointing finger, until her entire palm covers Irene’s hand. Irene doesn’t question it, her voice stuck in her drying throat. Neither does she withdraw her hand as Wendy takes one more step closer, finally crossing the invisible boundary they have set between them.

Pools of longing swirl around the younger girl’s coffee-colored eyes, and no words have to be exchanged to comprehend the severity of their situation, but they both remain mum, their eyes conversing in ways their mouths couldn’t do. Wendy’s eyes lower to Irene’s partially opened mouth, atmosphere thick and weighted with tension. The knots have overtaken Irene’s barely functioning reasoning. A voice is screaming at her to get a hold of reality, but her body is just so drawn to Wendy’s dipping head, her eyes closing at their noses brushing, her heart racing with anticipation.

And when Irene thinks Wendy is about to do the one thing she has always wanted to do for years, Wendy widens her eyes.

A moment of realization.

A moment of clarity.

A moment of sanity.

She steps back, ridding Irene of the warmth from her hand. Her eyes are going wild, gazing at everywhere but her.

“Sorry.”

Irene blinks. Breathes. Catches herself. Mentally slaps herself. She shakes her head, leaving Wendy by herself and muttering before she slides the glass doors open and goes back inside.

“Me too.”

_But maybe we can hold off one sec,_

_So we can keep this tension in check._

_There’s no way it’s not going there,_

_With the way we’re looking at each other._

**Author's Note:**

> another converted one from my jenlisa vault!
> 
> shoutout to jae, my number one angst supporter :)


End file.
